 |
Canon Pixma iX5000
by Frenchy140
In these days of digital photography, it is very important to have a good quality printer if you like printing your photographs from home.
So when my daughter was born, we decided to invest in a proper printer and purchased the Canon Pixma iX5000 colour printer (and with taking about 100 photographs of her every single day, it was a ... much needed purchase!).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE PRINTER
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The printer itself is fairly large (601 x 317.6 x 193.2mm) and weighs just over 9kgs, so it is a fairly significant piece.
It is slightly noisy, although moderately so when you compare that with the quality produced, you tend to forgive that.
The printer is black and grey and rather smart looking, which neatly and easily closes. It opens at the top to create a sheet feeder to put the paper in, where you can adjust the size of the sheet (up to A3+) and it will hold 150 pages at one time. It also opens at the bottom for the paper to come out, which can be pulled out further for larger sheets.
The printer is very easy to use as there are only two buttons at the front:
- On / Off button (green light)
- Error button (orange light), which flashes when the printer is out of paper / ink or if there is a stuck sheet in it. When you have cleared the fault, simply press the button to resume your printing.
You can also open the top of the printer to reveal the cartridges compartment. It takes a few seconds for the cartridges to appear as you open it and there is a red light over each of them, which will be flashing if the cartridge needs replacing (the ink level will also be indicated on your computer).
You can print photographs from your computer via USB port or directly from your camera.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
FUNCTIONS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* SPEED *
It is not a very fast printer, but it is not slow either. In terms of printing standard black and white documents, it is fairly fast as you would expect. The colour printing takes a little longer. I like the fact that depending on what you are printing, the printer sometimes pauses for a couple of seconds in order to let the previous sheet dry.
For photographs, the printing obviously takes longer and depending on the quality you want, the better quality, the longer it will take (you can select the quality you require from your computer or camera).
Printing a standard photograph (borderless 10 x 15 cm) of standard lab quality takes approximately 51 seconds and an A3 photograph would take 166 seconds.
* CARTRIDGES *
The cartridges are individual, which is great as they can be changed separately as and when you need.
There are 4 colours needed for the printer:
- Black (PGI-5BK), which is a larger one than the others
- Blue equivalent, called Cyan (CLI-8C)
- Red equivalent, called Magenta (CLI-8M)
- Yellow (CLI-8Y)
I originally used to buy Canon cartridges, which are very expensive on the High Street (around £24 for Black and £13 each for the other colours), and then I found that ordering them on Amazon would save me half the money, which made me quite happy although I felt that I was letting local shops down... But then I found out that you can get compatible cartridges (on Amazon) for a fraction of the price because they are not Canon, but have a chip added to them so that they can fit in the printer. The quality is very good and I have not noticed any difference. That made me very happy and I can now print away without worrying about the cost!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PAPER
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* PAPER SIZE *
The sheet feeder can print the following paper sizes: A3+, A3, B4, A4, B5, A5, Letter, Legal and custom sizes down to Credit Card size (54 x 86 mm)
* PAPER TYPE *
You can use the following papers with the printer:
- Plain Paper
- Envelopes
- Photo Paper Pro
- Photo Paper Plus Glossy
- Photo Paper Plus Double Sided
- Photo Paper Plus Semi-gloss
- Glossy Photo Paper
- Glossy Photo Paper "Everyday Use"
- Matte Photo Paper
- High Resolution Paper
- Transparency
- T-shirt Transfer
- Photo Stickers
- Super White Paper
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOFTWARE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Canon iX5000 will work with most computers, the minimum system requirements are:
* FOR WINDOWS *
PC with Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Me or Windows 98, USB interface, CD-ROM Drive. It also needs 300 MB free hard disk space for Windows XP/2000 and Windows Me/98.
* FOR MAC *
Macintosh computer with Mac OS X v10.2.8 or a later version, USB interface. It needs 350 MB of free hard disk space for Mac OS X v10.2.8 or later versions.
This is the software included with the printer:
* FOR WINDOWS *
Easy-WebPrint, Easy-PhotoPrint, PhotoRecord and Easy-PrintToolBox.
* FOR MAC *
Easy-PhotoPrint
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PRICE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Canon PIXMA iX5000 printer can be found new from £234 but the general price bracket is £300 to £415.
Overall, this is a great printer, printing very good quality documents and photographs and we are very pleased with it, I would definitely recommend it.
Thank you for reading and rating my review!
Read the complete review |
 |
Canon Pixma iP4000
by LastLine
What a fantastic printer this is.
I bought this printer what must be nearly 6 years ago now when I got my first job working at PC World. After some demonstrations from a Canon sales rep that was in store I was sold.
The printer contains five seperate inks, two black, cyan, magenta and yellow. The reasoning behind ... two black cartridges is that this allows the printer to store one black cartridge soley for text printing, useful if you print out photos by the dozen but don't want to be caught short when printing that important last minute letter.
The photo print quality is stunning, even by todays standards I'm thoroughly pleased by it, offering edge to edge printing on sizes up to A4 with speeds that won't dissapoint you. The text quality is similarly high offering sharp, crisp print outs with the added bonus of automatic duplex (back to back) printing so as not to waste paper. The printer also supplies some pretty decent printing software, though if you plug in you can plug and play without this stuff too.
Paper storage is brilliant with top and bottom loading allowing you to load 60% of a ream of paper at once means you could effectively use this as a laser alternative if you really wanted to as you can set the printer to automatically use both trays, or if like me you use it for photo and text printing? Load one with nice photo paper and one with copier paper, simply use the switch on the front to chose which to use, or go into print preferences.
Also on the front of this printer is a USB port for pictbridge compatible cameras allowing you to print without the need to use your computer at all if you want to.
The ink can be dear, but then which photo printer isn't? Look at the cost of ink and you'll never complain about the price of petrol again (£10 for 9ml or the sort? that's about £900 per litre ;-) ) Still you pay for good results I suppose and that's what you'll get from this, time after time.
Read the complete review |
|
|
Canon Pixma iP4300
by schmoogrz
The Canon iP4300 is a reasonably cheap printer, that doesn't mean it IS cheap - it costs a ton everytime the ink runs out.
You can't refill the cartridges since they're chipped too. In most places these catridges retail for about £8 each - and it takes five - PGI black, black, cyan, magenta and yellow. That's £40 in total. And ... no, the ink doesn't last that long - they hold 14ml each.
Okay, now I'm done trashing this product it isn't actually a bad printer. Photo prints look like they should - like ones you'd get professionally done (provided you use glossy paper and the right setting). It also prints on CDs!
When not printing photo prints it does print rather fast - though it all depends on what you're printing. It also prints directly from compatible cameras which is handy - but I've only used that feature once or twice.
The design itself is sleek - it has a front glossy panel. I can't say the printer itself is that durable since the front tray on ours broke. Since it relies on it being open to print and thought it was closed it was a screwdriver job fix!
I'd say it's good printer otherwise - if you don't mind the ink costs. It's probably better for someone who doesn't print too often - bare in mind ink cartridges dry out overtime though.
Read the complete review |
